Customer Discovery Interview Questions and Script

Customer discovery interviews explain how someone handled a real problem before you show them a solution. The strongest questions reconstruct the last relevant event: what triggered it, what the person tried, where the current approach failed, and what consequence followed.

Who to interview

Invite someone who recently faced the situation you want to understand. They do not need to use your product. “Recently evaluated our landing page” is weaker selection criteria than “handled a missed customer message in the last month.”

Do not use this script to measure market size or purchase intent. It helps explain behavior and constraints; a separate quantitative method is needed for prevalence.

Questions to ask

Start with one concrete episode and follow the chronology:

1. Tell me about the last time this happened.
2. What was going on when you first noticed the problem?
3. What did you do first?
4. What happened next?
5. Where did the current approach become difficult or unreliable?
6. What did you do instead?
7. Who else was involved or affected?
8. What happened if the problem was not resolved?
9. How did you know you were finished?

Ask one question at a time. When an answer becomes general, ask for the specific example again. Avoid “Would you use…?”, feature voting, and explaining your product.

Copy the complete UserTold script

Replace the shared-inbox example with one real situation from your product or market.

{
  "version": 2,
  "goals": [
    {
      "id": "current-work",
      "description": "Understand how team leads handled a missed customer message the last time it happened."
    }
  ],
  "segments": [
    {
      "id": "conversation",
      "mode": "talk",
      "title": "Recent experience",
      "talk": {
        "research_mode": "discovery",
        "goals": ["current-work"],
        "system_prompt": "Ask about the last customer message that went unanswered. What was happening, how did they notice, what did they do next, and what did it cost them? Ask one question at a time. Follow vague answers with a request for a specific example. Do not pitch the product or ask whether they would buy it."
      }
    }
  ]
}

Ask your agent to adapt it

Adapt the customer discovery script at https://usertold.ai/guides/customer-discovery-interview-questions to my product.

Ask me for the product decision, the recent situation a participant must have experienced, and who I can invite. Replace the example without adding hypothetical purchase questions or a product pitch. Show the complete Study JSON and wait for approval before saving or activating anything.

Review the result

A useful interview contains a real episode, the current behavior or workaround, the constraint that made it difficult, and the consequence. If the transcript contains mostly opinions, tighten participant selection and ask for a more recent example.

Use Feature Request Interview Questions when a user has already proposed a solution. Use Concept Testing Interview Questions when you have an idea or mockup ready to show.